In this pathbreaking book, Alice Kessler-Harris explores the meanings of women’s wages in the United States in the twentieth century, focusing on three sets of issues that capture the transformation of women’s roles: the battle over minimum wage for women, which exposes the relationship between family ideology and workplace demands; the argument over equal pay for equal work, which challenges gendered patterns of self-esteem and social organization; and the current debate over comparable worth, which seeks to incorporate traditionally female values into new work and family trajectories.

In this updated edition of a groundbreaking classic, Alice Kessler-Harris explores the meanings of women’s wages in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on three issues that capture the transformation of women’s roles: the battle over minimum wage for women, which exposes the relationship between family ideology and workplace demands; the argument concerning equal pay for equal work, which challenges gendered patterns of self-esteem and social organization; and the debate over comparable worth, which seeks to incorporate traditionally female values into new work and family trajectories.